Today's the Day You Can Pay for Steam Hardware

The Electronic Entertainment Expo begins in two weeks. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo will do their damnest to sell you on PlayStation, Xbox, and Wii. But maybe, you’ll have already spent your money on an alternative of sorts. Today, you can pre-order the fabled Steam Controller, and the Steam Link streamer.

And—if you do it now—you’ll get it shipped to you on October 16th, nearly a month before anybody else.

The Steam Controller is fairly self-explanatory: it’s the long-awaited £40 wireless gamepad that uses touchpads to emulate a keyboard and mouse. Valve thinks it’s key to playing PC games from the couch, and from what we’ve seen, it actually works pretty damn well.

Also £40: the Steam Link. It’s a tiny set-top-box with one purpose and one purpose only: streaming games from your existing gaming PC to a TV across the house. We haven’t really been able to try it in real-world conditions, but it’s got no less than four Wi-Fi antennas to help make its case.

I can’t necessarily recommend you buy any of these today. I’m the kind of guy who always waits for reviews. But Valve wants you to at least consider Steam before you spend your money on a traditional game console, and the perk they’re offering might be hard to ignore. If you buy today, you can play October 16th. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait till November 10th—when both products will hit shelves at Game—to try the new platform in earnest.